Force Protection earns UK "Wolfhound" contract

Force Protection's going to the dogs. That is, Force Protection vehicles are delivered to the Brits and given canine nicknames. First, FPI won the contract to provide the "Mastiff" vehicle to Great Britain. Then the company won a contract to make a Cougar 4x4 called the "Ridgback." Now, they will make another modified version of the Cougar, dubbed the Wolfhound.

Force Protection Inc.’s agility and speed of response to customer requirements is playing a key role in winning new orders for its range of mine resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles.

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Michael Moody, pointed to Force Protection’s selection by the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) as the Preferred Bidder for the Wolfhound Tactical Support Vehicle (Heavy) programme as an example of the way his company is strengthening its capability to respond to urgent operational requirements. “We completed design work and built two prototypes for Wolfhound, which is based on our highly successful Cougar vehicle, in just 90 days. During this time we also carried out blast tests and mobility trials.”
(DefPro.com)

Defence of the Realm has a photo believed to represent the Wolfhound, along with some information about the program.

Cougar 4x4's will wear the name "Ridgeback" with the Brits

Via "Defence of the Realm":

After what seem interminable delays – with the announcement having made in Parliament in December – a formal notification has been made to Congress that the UK is looking to buy 157 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles with associated equipment and services. The total value, if all options are exercised, could be as high as $125 million.

These are the Force Protection 4x4 Cougars which, in British service, will be named "Ridgebacks" and, although the order has not been formally placed with Force Protection, this is the final stage of clearance before a sale can go ahead. It would seem reasonable now to assume that we will shortly be hearing the final details of a contract with the British government.

Force Protection's weak rival (reorganized to avoid bankruptcy last we checked) Protected Vehicles Inc. must be slightly miffed that their "Ridgeback" MRAP isn't the vehicle being sold to the British. PVI marketed its Golan MRAP to the British but the Cougar/Ridgeback came out on top.

I had assumed that the new Cougar order would be up-armored into a new set of Mastiffs, currently in service in Iraq and Afghanistan for our British allies. As it turns out, the Cougar is the Mastiff and the Cougar is the Ridgeback, but a Mastiff isn't a Ridgeback. It could have been worse. The Ridgeback could have been the Mastiff while the Cougar was the Ridgeback where the Cougar was not also the Mastiff.

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Force Protection scores with sale to Brits

April 10 (Reuters) - Shares of Force Protection Inc (FRPT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) rose more than 8 percent on Thursday, a day after the armored vehicle maker said the U.S. Defense Department approved the sale of its mine-resistant vehicles worth $125 million to Britain. The British government had requested the sale of 157 mine-resistant ambush protected (MRAP) Cougar vehicles built by the company for its troops in Iraq and Afghanistan
(Reuters)

The Brits seem quite taken with the Cougar/Mastiff. The shift of the U.S. armed forces to the Caiman, MaxxPro and RG-33 has been a nice coincidence for our allies across the pond, since delivery on their order will likely accelerate as a result.

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Cougar, Badger ... what's the difference?

April 15, 2007: The Iraqi army has received its first batch of 40 Badger Armored Vehicles. There is some confusion over what the Badger is. It's basically a variant of the popular Cougar armored truck, widely used by bomb disposal teams. The Iraq army is buying 378 Badger armored trucks. Originally called the Iraqi Light Armored Vehicles (ILAV), the Badgers will cost about $432,000 each. The ILAV is based on the four wheel Cougar, which can carry ten passengers. If the Badger proves popular, the contract makes provision for a total of 1,050 vehicles to be delivered by 2009.
(strategypage)

So add the Badger to Force Protection's Cougar-type lineup, next to the UK's Mastiff version.

clipped from www.blackanthem.com

An Iraqi soldier climbs into a Badger for the drive to Baghdad from Taji Army Base in support of Operation Fardh Al-Qanoon March 31. A total of 398 Badgers are to be delivered this year as part of Iraqi military's modernization program. (Photo by U.S. Navy MC2 Elisandro Diaz)

From the same Strategy Page story:

But with as many as 20,000 MRAPs on hand, keeping them in storage may not be an option. As a result, the U.S. Department of Defense has halted work on designing the hummer replacement (the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle or JLTV).

The JLTV, I believe, is the class of vehicle including Force Protection's Cheetah and Protected Vehicles' Protector (not to exhaust the list; I just don't know what other companies are offering, though I know that Lockheed is working on something). Given that both vehicles are designed to resist IEDs while permitting the type of speech and mobility the military had with the Hummer, I find this decision difficult to fathom. The JLTVs have largely been developed already, from what I can tell.

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The bottom of the (inverted) pyramid

I was updating myself on MRAP news today and ran across a USA-Today story on manufacturers' efforts to develop armor protections against Explosively Formed Penetrators, the type of IED most lethal to U.S. vehicles.

Most of story was no surprise, as it stayed line with the narrative that MRAPs are unprotected against EFPs. Near the bottom of the story, where the traditional print-media story form stuffs the less-interesting and least-critical detail, I discovered something I didn't know.

"We have a solution that is made up of standard and new materials in a configuration that will defeat a number of the EFP devices," said Jim Tuten, director of research development and armor programs at Protected Vehicles, which is based in North Charleston, S.C. "We have tested it against a number of them at several different government facilities successfully."

Force Protection, a major Pentagon MRAP contractor, has anti-EFP armor in a vehicle called the Mastiff, which it has sold the British military.

(USA Today)

One of my favorite blogs, the delightful across-the-pond EU Referendum, had criticized the Mastiff version of the Force Protection Cougar because it lacked windows with which soldiers could make themselves aware of their surroundings before disembarking at the rear of the vehicle. Apparently, the EFP protections designed by Force Protection resulted in the elimination of the windows.

Linking back to EU Referendum helped me stumble across a blog entry from 2006 that I had missed, on IEDs, EFPs, and military vehicles. Pay them a visit.